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Determiner Omission in Dutch Agrammatic Aphasia: Different from German, Similar to English?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 2010

Esther Ruigendijk*
Affiliation:
University of Oldenburg
*
Department of Dutch, Fk III University of Oldenburg D-26111 Oldenburg Germany [esther.ruigendijk@uni-oldenburg.de]

Abstract

This study compares speech production data of agrammatic aphasic speakers in Dutch, German, and English to examine the relative importance of different properties of determiners and pronouns (such as case, gender, definiteness) in these three languages. Agrammatic aphasic speakers omit determiners and use relatively few pronouns in their speech production. Ruigendijk (2007) compared Dutch and German-speaking agrammatic speakers’ performance and showed that the German group omitted more determiners. The current study adds data from English-speaking agrammatic aphasics to test the hypothesis that the more severe problems in German agrammatism were caused by case morphology, which is not present on Dutch and English determiners. The results show that English patterns with Dutch, and thus support the hypothesis that it is case morphology that makes the German determiners more problematic.

Type
ARTICLES
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Germanic Linguistics 2010

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